059 - Solve problems, don’t create products with Rob Hughey

Dec 23, 2020

Show overview:
Rob Hughey is the co-founder of Team Cura, a company with a mission to dramatically improve high school athletes’ recruiting readiness by improving their character with interpersonal skills training, confidence building, and performance improvement

Rob’s Why:
Rob saw a need to help young student athletes become recognized by collegiate programs. Rob played golf at the University of Central Missouri and struggled to gain attention from colleges for an athletic scholarship. He decided to create a company that focuses on the intangible, interpersonal skills that help high school athletes gain more attention.

Furthermore, Rob explains how high school students, to no fault of their own, haven’t had the professional experience needed to be successful. Rob wanted to provide the educational materials needed in order to be successful both in the classroom and in the business world. He wanted to help students have the opportunity to apply for athletic scholarships and save thousands of dollars during their college years.

Creating Team Cura:
From personal experience, Rob saw a need to help high school students gain experience and valuable skills for after graduation. He talked with both hiring professionals as well as friends with kids that see an issue with helping be recognized by colleges. He decided to create a solution to this problem.

With the experience of being both a high school and college student athlete, he knew first hand how difficult the process can be but how beneficial it is to lessen student debt with athletic scholarships. He also utilized the skills from his mom being both a college professor and experience in HR. By blending all these skills and experiences together, they knew they wanted to create a solution.

Advice to other entrepreneurs:
Go forward and do. Oftentimes, entrepreneurs have this idea and continue to do research and find out more information, but never take that initial step and begin. If the idea works, you know what to do next time. If the idea doesn’t work, it’s not the end of the world. You just need to fix it and find a way to do it better.

Dealing with indirect competitors:
Although there are several other platforms that help students market themselves to colleges, Rob mentions how their platform and product is more niche and direct. Their product hits needs that had not yet been satisfied.

Book recommendations:
Malcolm Gladwell:

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

Outliers: The Story of Success

Michael Pantalon: Instant Influence: How to Get Anyone to Do Anything - Fast